I Can Never Forgive Him
by Delillium
Summary: While watching a cinema classic, The Wizard of Oz, Tony gets to thinking about his troubled relationship with his father and the favoritism he always had with a certain mutated patriot. Can he ever forgive Steve? Is it even possible? Rated T for some pretty bad language, but nothing else.


**I Can Never Forgive Him**

* * *

He can never forgive him. Forgive him for what he did.

He doesn't even know. Doesn't even know he wronged him, but he has. And it hurts.

Not like the type of hurt when Loki is throwing his army down your throat or shrapnel pierces your heart, or when poison leaks through your system, or when you're thrown rag-doll style through a black hole vortex. None of those types of injury. It's a much deeper pain. One he would trade for any of those other pains any day. It was a deep, throbbing, cutting pain that buried itself deeper and deeper into the skin, through every organ, and finally hit a place he couldn't really name.

Somewhere deep inside, it twisted and clanged. He couldn't get rid of it and nothing he did could make it go away.

_Throb _

_Throb _

_Throb_

It throbbed in a rhythm he could time.

But every time he thinks about him, or Howard, the pain comes flooding back.

Because it's not fair. It just wasn't fair. And as childish as his argument sounded, it was true.

Howard Stark only ever loved one person, and that was Steve. Steve, his best friend and the father-son bond they shared, was a thing of jealousy to Tony.

Of course, he'd never told Steve of the rocky relationship his father and himself had had. How could he, when Steve was constantly shoving down his throat that Howard was a fantastic guy? How could he tell him that Howard had used him as a ragdoll and beat him every night that he got too drunk to make it upstairs to beat his mother?

How could he break the Captain's heart like that?

How could he...?

He wanted to. Wanted to make him suffer and feel the heartbreak he did. The shame.

But he couldn't. He could. But he couldn't.

When Steve became a popsicle in the middle of the arctic tundra, Howard had spiraled into self-hate and anti-socialism. He forced himself to marry and try to have a son, all in an elaborate act to be normal. To try and forget about Steve. To try and forget that he failed that young captain.

But he couldn't forget no matter how hard he ever tried. He had an attic of memorabilia he bought off multiple websites, and in his free time when Tony wanted to show him his some of his invention sketches or his report card, he was there in the attic staring at the cartoon-ized face of the man he once called _'Son'._

So he was stuck. With a wife he didn't really love, a son who only reminded him of his previous failures, and a load of work laid out in front of him.

The paper that Tony recieved sugar-coated their crash schematics pretty well, but Tony had a feeling it was a consented duo-suicide trip.

That's what hurt him most, and a few times, had made him break down and just fucking _cry_.

His father dedicated half his life looking for Steve and when he realized he'd never find him, he killed himself and his mother agreed. Neither one gave a _fuck _about their son. His father was too wrapped up in finding Steve, and yet his mother was just too miserable and emotionally damaged to care what happened to him, Tony.

To care about the genius son who just wanted to please them. To make them proud. Who skipped numerous grades and flew through college. Who worked in his father's lab day in and day out to try and just _please _the bastard.

He did all that and his father still didn't crack a smile, and all Steve would ever had to do, is fucking pop out of a piece of ice and it would make his father jump up and down in glee.

He remembered the nights his father thought he had a lead as to where Steve was, he would be frantic, his voice would hold panic, but a certain lightness he never had with his son. Tony would try and be around him then, hoping his father was in a good enough mood the he would praise him or _something _but all he ever did was yell at him to get out.

He was busy.

Too busy.

To find Steve.

Because when Steve went plummeting into the ice, so did his father's heart.

And the years of misery and two failed suicide attempts could never be forgotten long enough to ever...

_...ever..._

_...**ever**..._

forgive him.

Tony watched as Steve entered into the living room area, looking at what was on the television.

Wizard of Oz.

Tony hadn't really been watching it, but the simplicity of each of the character's problems made him think of his own. How complicated real life was, and how easy everything could be in a movie.

"Oh, you're watching this? I loved seeing this at the pictures." Steve hoped onto the couch beside him with just a phantom of a smile illuminating on his face.

Tony looked downcast, but he tried to return the smile.

A ghostly smile.

Could he ever forgive him?

Maybe, just maybe, he could.


End file.
